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HD Recorder Can Use Standard DVDs
Stonent1 writes "Early next month Panasonic is going to release a DVD recorder that can store HD content on standard DVDs. The new device is expected to be a boon for the backer of the Blu-ray format; Blu-ray uses discs several times more expensive than standard DVD media. While the DVD discs won't have the capacity of a Blu-ray disc, the content will be of similar visual quality. 'The company said it will start selling three models of new DVD recorders capable of recording full HD programs on conventional DVD discs on November 1. The high-end model with a 500-gigabyte hard disk drive is likely to sell for 130,000 yen, Matsushita said.'" Update: 10/02 16:18 GMT by Z : Rewritten to clarify.
....if the machine itself is so expensive?
I'm guessing that this player just writes MPEG4 files to a DVD, which it can then play back. Why do we even need Blu-Ray. Couldn't a much cheaper device be made with no blu-ray capabilities that just records the HD Content straight to MPEG4 on DVD? That would actually big a major blow to both HDDVD and BluRay.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
We're talking about a digital world, where the medium is far less important than the codec. Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, whatever -- they're all about taking digital information, decoding it, and displaying it.
Since most of our movies are XViD (including our homemade videos), we've generally stopped using disc formats entirely. If I burn the XViD to CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray, it's still the data and codec that counts, not the medium.
Yes, people want to know if a given disc will work with their player, which is one reason why we need medium formats. Yet in a relatively free market, you'd see many multi-medium drives that work with almost anything (see most $49 DVD players today), so I'm guessing the number one reason for making new medium formats is control and DRM.
Is there any market reason for worrying about the medium, rather than the CODEC?
So HD content can be written on plain DVD's....cool..Now we only need DVD players that can read HD content off DVD's
HD-DVD has been supported since the beginning on DVD discs. The format specification explicitly allows for DVD media. I have a dual layer DVD+R disc that contains HD-DVD format video and it plays fine on my PC. I've read on various video forums that those who own HD-DVD players have reported being able to play such discs. The only news here is that BluRay apparently is now supported on DVD discs.
As far as I can tell from the extraordinarily sparse FA, that's all we know. The article made less sense than the summary
Isn't that the slashdot equivalent of dividing by zero?
OH SHI-
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Head to head Blu-ray vs. HD DVD comparison
2+2=5 for very large values of 2.
Note the required bit I just mentioned, on HD-DVD the AACS layer is optional but on Blu-Ray it is a standard requirement for all commercially-pressed discs. I remember reading about this some months back about some smaller indie studios only releasing on HD-DVD simply because they could forego paying license fees to the AACS people (fees that cut into limited profit margins) and just release their discs DRM-free. That's not an option on Blu-Ray.
If I read this correctly it will record on standard dvd media using the blue ray laser.
This may be possible, if the dyes used on standard media will respond to the blue laser.
It would enable the pit size to be smaller and fit more data. I would suspect that it would
also work with single layer media, but hold about half as much content. The disks might not
be playable on a standard blue ray machine (without a firmware update).
Kinda pricey, but if Panasonic can get the cost down this would be a big boost to the blue ray camp.
Note that it should be even easier for the hd-dvd guys to do the same thing.
I'm pretty sure that the 18hr bit mentioned in the article is for 50GB BluRay disks but the article didn't clarify that part.
It does mention a 1TB hard drive can store 381hr of video which would mean the bitrate is roughly 5.8Mbps.
1TB - 381hr ~ 5.8Mbps
4.5GB DVD - 1.8hr
8.5GB DVD DL - 3.4hr
25GB BluRay - 9.5hr
50GB BluRay - 19.0hr
The above doesn't account for filesystem overhead, which is probably why my numbers are off a bit.
So is this some type of hybrid/dual laser device? Or is it a blu ray that uses the blue laser to record on conventional DVDs? Or what exactly?
It almost certainly has dual lasers, as do most recorders, but that has nothing to do with what it does...
Until they release more specs I can only speculate, but the press release makes it obvious enough - This simply contains a perfectly ordinary DVD burner, to which it writes MPEG-4 data on a normal DVD using the FS layout expected by BR drives.
Just as you can burn a DVD filesystem to a CD, you can just as easily burn a BR or HD filesystem to a DVD. They simply don't hold as much, requiring either loss of quality or limited duration (or both).
Now, why anyone would want to buy a recorder that costs more than the difference in price of recordable discs over the practical lifetime of that player while burning only ultra-low quality content, ya got me. The coolness factor, I guess? Personally, I plan to wait for dual-format next-gen burners and for one or the other's writeable discs to drop a tolerable price.
I'm not trying to sound like an old man on the porch, but who cares about all this cruft? Is Higher Def going to make a bad movie better? Does Lower Def make a good movie worse? I can understand the arguments against Pan and Scan, as you literally are not seeing everything. However, I don't see much of a difference between HD and SD.
Someone told me that after watching things in HD for a while, that they can't watch things in SD without noticing a difference. Is that a good thing? Am I going to be in a bar watching a game and be annoyed because it is in SD? Or over at a friends house and decide not to watch a movie cause they don't got the fancy, schmancy HD set up?
I'll probably like it when I get it, but I just don't see what all the fuss is about.
Most HDTV recording options require access to the compressed data. In other words, an ATSC broadcast, unencrypted QAM, or encrypted QAM with a cable card. If this device takes decompressed HDTV (e.g., component inputs) and compresses it in real time, then that's the part of this device that's really interesting.
I see nowhere that states what the data storage capacity is, so I thought I'd check the numbers.
"The one-terabyte hard drive can store up to 381 hours of full HD programs."
So if 1,000 GB is 381 hours, 1 GB is 2.62467191601049868766 hours. Yeah, 2 and a half hours per GB. Hmm... What sounds like that... Oh yeah, xvid.
The trick here is not that they are getting more capacity, it's that they are using a different codec. (Not necessarily xvid, it's just a LOT more compact than mpeg, and made a good example.)
Nothing is actually said of the visual quality at that storage rate, either... It probably has horrid lossy-ness. But it's 1080p! lol Just another marketing trick to fool the unwary.
So even if this device uses a normal laser, it's gonna get 10+ hours per DVD at '1080p'. Using the blue laser is just a gimmick, I'm betting.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Perhaps this will cause some of our brain-addled technology media "journalists" to start noticing that HD-DVD and Blueray aren't about high definition video (my 2 year old Oppo DVD player does that just fine, apart from the fact no one will sell me a movie in DivX format), nor really about increased storage. Its really about moving to a format with a more functional DRM system.
There is no reason that standard 2 hour movies can't be distributed on a double-layer DVD using a modern compression format -- which are supported in just about every $99 DVD player I see at Circuit City. I don't have a problem with the big media companies moving in this direction - its their content, they can pick their format. I do have a problem with the fact that not a single journalist sees fit to note in their articles that the media companies public rationale for the switch is specious.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
I've got 1920x1080 DivX of Naruto's 3rd movie. Total size - 2.2 gigs for 94 minutes of video and audio, with four different language subtitle choices. All on one DVD.
I'm glad I have a high-def DivX-capable standalone player. Screw these more expensive formats! Hooray compression technology!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
According to my opinion that's how it should be. A "file format" is independent from the medium. Why not store mp3's on DAT or MD? :-)
I just purchased a 320G byte hard drive for $99. It cost $15 to make it into a usb drive. At that price one could not buy the equivalent storage in dvd-rw disks. The hard drives are more reliable and much faster transferring data. There is no limit on how many times one can erase the hard drive either as I know there is a limit on how many time a dvd-rw can be rewritten. It is much easier to find an indiviudal movie on a hard drive than to look through the 70-80 dvd that it would take for the equivalent storage. It is also much harder to scratch a hard drive platter than it is to scratch or get a dirt mark on a dvd-rw disk.
How is a third format going to be a "boon" for Blu-Ray? Wouldn't it just weaken Blu-Ray by providing a cheaper (media-wise) alternative to Blu-Ray?
Microsoft earlier tried to push VC-1 on standard DVDs; it would make a lot of sense for consumers to deliver AVC on DVD. It would not do much for producers and studios however, because DVDs are already easy to rip and the format is falling in price. Once "good enough" movie downloads start, the ability to market HD discs will become far harder, just as MP3s killed any real market for SACD/DVD-A.
Origins of the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD War
Blu-ray vs HD-DVD in Next Generation Game Consoles
>It almost certainly has dual lasers
The frikken sharks are also very expensive
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
"Voting With Your Feet" is still a valid concept. After reading the existing discussion, I side with h4rm0ny.
And I disagree that companies pay less attention to "theoretical" money. In fact we have some good examples right now... the RIAA and MPAA. They have pissed off a large percentage of the U.S. populace by going after that "theoretical" money.
The act of NOT buying CDs has brought us to the point that the music industry is now dropping DRM. People stopped buying over-priced CDs, and refused to buy DRMed rips. People voted with their feet... it was not the buying segment that changed the market, it was the non-buying segment.
I believe that not buying DRMed video will have a similar effect.
I burn H264 vids to a DVD. It stands to reason that some hardware device would eventually get around to doing the same. The more important question is where the hell does it record its HD content from.
130000 yen = $1126.84 oh yes.. give me those mods!! haha!
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
A fair point, the compression artefacts are fairly noticable on most divx stuff.
However what is more important is if the quality improves at all. If HD compressed onto a DVD gives better quality than a normal DVD I'll take it regardless of wether the quality is worse than on some Blu Ray player I have no intention of buying.